Hello and welcome to the first CardLife DevBlog.
I’m going to try and commit to writing one of these every week to let you guys know what we are up to between launches and to give you a greater insight into our development. I’ll probably aim for a new DevBlog every Thursday!
New YouTube Video
First off I have just released a new YouTube video over on our CardLife channel (click here). It’s a small video giving you a sneak preview of our next update Caverns, and answers a lot of commonly asked questions that we receive from our social platforms and in-game feedback form - so you should definitely check it out.
World Design
So as I have been mentioning in our Update Newsletters we are currently working very hard on our procedural world tech, which will hopefully allow us to create vast worlds with which we can create the game.
Our last update: Big World, was a step in that direction as we added strata which created specific bands within the world as you mine deeper. These strata bands will act as unique zones or biomes that contain a variety of unique creatures, plants and resources. Although at the moment they are just solid blocks of dirt like the below image:
Currently we are working on adding a 3D noise map to the world which will allow us to overlay different materials such as stone and ore (copper, iron etc) to the world along with caverns, like the below cross section shows:
With this comes a lot problems though such as rendering & performance issues and the size of the save file to name a few. So we have been feverishly working on improving these issues which as you can imagine takes a lot of code time and brainpower.
Ultimately we want to be able to add several surface biomes (forest, snow, mountain etc) along with several underground biomes to create a varied and interesting world.
Cardboard Art
Our resident artist Mike has also been working on the textures for the new materials that we are going to be introducing with the Caverns update. We have tried very hard to make sure that each new material that is added to the game has a distinct look to it so that when you are deep underground you can easily distinguish what you are mining, which is harder than it sounds.
Crafting
In terms of design I have spent the last couple of weeks really fleshing out the crafting side of the game, working out what materials are going to be in the world both from creature drops and materials found naturally within the world. I have then been creating the recipes that you will need to follow to craft the relevant equipment and gear, such as the Mechanical Wings - which is a fairly advanced bit of tech that allows you to glide for an extended period of time. Next on my list is to start designing the spell list - which I think I’m really going to enjoy.
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Well this turned out to be a fairly long first DevBlog but I hope it gives you a better insight into what we are doing and what’s coming next. Like I said at the start, I’m hoping to release a new DevBlog every Thursday so let’s see how it goes :)
Hope you have a great day!
Cheers,